


Double Blind

by caretta



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Drug Mule, Forced Pregnancy, M/M, Mech Preg, Smuggling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25756624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caretta/pseuds/caretta
Summary: This was gonna be Meister’s last job, ok? He’d just smuggle some syk, pocket some shannix, then hightail the Pit outta Cybertron to start a new life elsewhere. The universe was his oilster! But first he hadda get this one shipment outta Petrex and, well...Nobot told him the drug would comeinsidea mech.
Relationships: Jazz/Prowl, Mesothulas/Prowl (Transformers)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Klik = 1.2 minutes  
> Cycle = 1 hour 15 minutes  
> Mega-cycle = 93 hours  
> Deca-cycle = 3weeks  
> Stellar cycle = 7.5 months  
> Metacycle = 13 months

As if the hike wasn’t enough, it started raining. 

“Frag kinda weather is this!” Clamp yelped, then immediately coughed and hissed as acid hit his glossa. Meister made a face — they were near an old bombing site, nothing in the air potent enough to burn, but the taste though? Still nasty. He shrugged to readjust his blaster, and continued slogging. 

Behind him, Clamp still muttered, slipping a couple times as he tried to copy Meister’s footing. “And why couldn’t we stay out front? Momus joined after me, and he gotta sit with Deimos all nice’n cosy over there! Why’s the drop so complicated this time?!”

Meister had to stop a long vent. He wasn’t a greenhorn or anything — gettit, his horns? — but bots like Clamp made him feel a million metacycles old. Except that wasn’t a good line of thought to dwell on, because Deimos wasn’t the type to hire _en masse_ to buff his number. No, Deimos knew exactly what he was sending dumb kids like Clamp out here for. As for Meister, who knew? Mebbe the slagger just hated him. 

“Because, Clampy-crampy,” he said, flipping himself up a slippery ledge before turning ‘round to give Clamp a hand, “some dumbaft pissed Deimos off real bad, the boss decided to raid his place before we go off-state.”

Puffs of smoke went up as more rain hit Clamp’s shoulder vents, kid was heaving like a bullos and they were barely two-thirds of the way up. Yep, best not get too friendly with this one. Meister doubted he’d even last long enough to get off the ship. 

“Really? So he’s a dumbaft _and_ suicidal then. Why doesn’t Deimos just off him?”

Meister didn’t bother giving a look. Off him? Naw, that’d be too kind. Real good spark in him, that Deimos. ‘Sides—

“He still owed us some stuff. The drop, remember?”

And speaking of, there was some faint light up ahead. Any other mech would have missed it, given the dark and pissing rain, but his visor didn’t come cheap. Meister waved Clamp quiet, then checked his topo. Sure enough, they were just below one of the old dumpsites. Must be some hardcore generator running in there, that even black transparisteel couldn’t shade it completely. He commed Solenoid.

“Yo, Meis!”

“We found it,” he said, “no sign of other entrances. Want me to go in?”

One klik as Solenoid waited for orders. 

“Not yet, boss said wait for him to lure the slagger out first. Just sit tight. And tell Clamp to apply his name to his trap!”

Clamp looked put out, “I dun talk that much!”, but after that he stayed mercifully quiet. 

Meister checked his gears again, an instinctive ritual as the rain droned on, providing white noise to his thoughts. Three neutral ships took off this morning already, another was boarding right as he was getting mud in his flaps a cycle ago. Soon enough, there would be no more ships to board, except badged ones. And by that time, any _badgeless_ ones still left on Cybertron, like Deimos’, would be even worse. 

Nope, he made up his mind, and he would stick to it this time. One last job, the pay would be enough to buy his way to G Nebula at least. Heck, he’d hitchhike all the way to the Benzuli Expanse if he had to. Anywhere in the galaxy but here. No more excuses. No more waiting. 

No more longing. 

“Meis, Meis!” Clamp whispered, tugging on his armguard. Kid’d get his arm ripped off its socket once of these days, going around touching mechs all casual like that. Half a deca-cycle with Deimos hadn’t taught him anything? Meister’s files automatically added one death flag under his name, which didn’t mean much as his entire profile was just a sea of red. 

Meister looked to where Clamp was pointing — sure enough, there was one alt driving from the foot of the mountain towards the city, most likely to the shipyard. It was just too bad there would be nothing but ash for him to come back to. Deimos wanted him alive to see it.

Once their “mark” had gone far enough, Solenoid pinged him to get his aft inside. It was easy unscrewing the transparisteel panel without pinging any alarms, then he roped Clamp in to do the one thing the kid was good at. Meister’ usual break-in methods wouldn’t work here, something about this hidey-hole’s owner being disgustingly fond of “unorthodox” security, so it was easier to just let Clamp temporarily zap the whole system, then let Meister reboot it his way. 

Besides, if it didn’t work and the kid died, he could finally remove his profiles. Those death flags were making his system laggy. 

The light flickered, barely a second, but he already plugged in and that was all it took. Except, hmm... This looked strange. Less a shield to keep someone from going in, and more to keep whoever in there from getting out. 

“Can I come down now? I can’t feel my pedes!” 

Meister eyeballed the distance, then just cut the rope. Clamp yelped, banging his elbow on something on his way down, but whatever, he’d live. Meister dropped like a cat, no point keeping silent now of course, it was just habit. Blaster ready, he looked around. 

A pair of optics stared him right back. 

Frag! Only experience kept him from jumping. Just optics, floating in some sickening green tube. Even worse, they were still attached to a brain module, biolights pulsing weakly. They couldn’t blink, of course, no socket no opticlids, but they looked... alive. 

It freaked him the frag out. 

Another look only dialed that up to eleven. This entire... this cavern dug into the mountain, what was left of an old mine, had been converted into some sick lab rivaling tales of the Institute. Did he say “lab”? There were some science equipments, of course, everything outside the tubes looked pristine, in fact, _packed up ready to move away_ , but the inside of those tubes looked fresh out of a slaughterhouse. 

Behind him, very expectedly, Clamp hurled. 

Slowly, Meister walked down to check between the rows, blaster still out. No wonder this place needed that massive generator. This wasn’t drug, he never heard of any syk production involving strips of entrails. Nor dissected organics. Some of them even _wriggled_ , and nope, not looking, not if he wanted to keep his energon down. 

It wasn’t even a big cave, but the sheer scale of depravity blindsided him, so much that Meister managed to walk half way down the first row before Clamp pointed out, voicebox still full of static,

“Holy slag, is that a person?!!”

***

“Holy slag, is that a person?!!”

What a curious question. To counter, was that mech using the end of a rope still tied to his waist to wipe his mouth?

Prowl tried to sit up, displacing the mesh Mesothulas had haphazardly thrown on top of him on his way out. As if that would be enough to cover this massive crime scene, as if _Prowl_ was the one part that needed covering up. It wasn’t easy, what with his servos still cuffed behind his back, but he used his left shoulder as leverage and pushed himself up enough to lean on one of Mesothulas’ tanks. 

It was full of shrill, sharp-dentaed writhing cyberoctopi, the kind with one optic inside their mouth that seemed to stare into your soul right as they devoured you. Somehow though, he doubted the content of that tank was the reason these two mechs’ jaws had metaphorically hit the floor. 

Wriggling a bit to get more comfortable — his shoulders hurt, not to the mention the rest of his body — Prowl dimmed his optics and counted to ten, giving his potential rescuers (??%) time to pull themselves together. 

Finally, one of them spoke up. The one with the blaster, though he had lowered it for now. 

“Kid, run out front and open the door for Deimos. It should work now. Tell him I need Paean in here.”

“But— but Meis that is— Is that what I think it is?! Oh Primus it’s a spar— An Autobot spar—“

Meister barked, “I said RUN!”

The other meeped, actually _meeped_ as he transformed and took off in a beeline, piece of rope still stuck to his backwheels. His alt was actually kind of impressive, Prowl would peg him as some kind of engineer (?$!%), most likely grid service (¥<#%), though unlikely to have gone anywhere near the front (*{;@%). 

Ugh. 

This was getting kind of annoying. 

On his part, blaster-mech seemed to have pulled himself together. He looked remarkably calm now, in fact, having holstered his gun before pulling out a box from his subspace. 

“Your medical port, please,” he said, already running a scanner from Prowl’s pedes up, even though his eyes weren’t anywhere near there. He didn’t openly gawk, though, which would mean some degree of familiarity with— the files pinged him as corrupted, which he knew they damn well _weren’t_ , he just couldn’t access them because of this—

“Before you do so, could you please disable this?”

Prowl gestured to the black collar around his intake. Back in his Enforcer days, some mad scientist keeping his associate chained and collared in a secret mountain lab would have given the press deca-cycles’ worth of news. But Mesothulas was nothing but an overachiever, and that collar wouldn’t even ping as 5th on the list of noticeable things about Prowl now. 

Still laying out tools on the floor next to Prowl’s... let’s call it recharge slab, to be polite, his (definitely? how do people tag these probabilities?) rescuer shook his head. 

“Naw mech, I’m just taking a look atcha before my boss decides what to do. That thing stays on until he says otherwise.”

Prowl furrowed his browbridge. 

“I am still cuffed, my pedes are chained to this slab. I doubt I can go anywhere, with or without your boss’ say so. Plus, you have a blaster and I obviously do not.”

The other mech smirked. 

“Please, you Autobots and your logical arguments. Think I don’t know what your frametype would be fitted with? However your botfriend managed to keep you here, I intend to follow his way. Your collar stays on, sweetspark.”

Prowl didn’t huff, but he didn’t turn to offer his medical port, either. His cooperation wasn’t needed of course, Prowl had no illusion that someone breaking into Mesothulas’ lab would just help him out of the kindness of their spark, still it stirred something in him when his helper pulled his shoulder to one side and mumbled, “Sweet Primus.”

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Just some basic Cybertronian decency. This thief, this smuggler could still give a reaction when they saw someone’s port cover torn clean off, their wrist nicked and jacked to fit several intravenous lines of god-knows-what colorful substances. 

“Oh Solus I don’t even wanna know what those are,” the — this lack of data is bothersome — still unknown mech expertly clipped the lines, careful not to drop any liquid on either of them before gently pulling them off. Much gentler than Mesothulas had jammed them in, in fact. His tools looked more DIY than professional, probably self-taught. Dropped of medical school? Field-trained medic? 

“What is your designation?” Prowl asked, because there wasn’t much else for him to do, or to know. His head was a noisy maze where his tactical computer would be, and his processor kept pushing data there for evaluation only for results to come back scrambled. Mesothulas didn’t want to mess with what attracted him to Prowl in the first place, only disable him long enough so that he could take Prowl off-world. Whatever the collar was doing, it needed to _go_. Prowl had no chance otherwise. 

“That’s Meister, love, Meis for short,” his— Meister said distractedly, tapping on a data pad connected to his scanner. Probably running Prowl’s diagnostics to see what chances they had that the thing floating in Prowl’s abdomen wouldn’t blow this place skyhigh. The casual way he said it would also ping this designation as fake. It didn’t matter, Prowl had his face and frametype. As soon as he could access his data bank he would be able to pin him down. 

“Hey good news, this doesn’t look explosive, and you’re unlikely to die yourself anytime soon. Bad news is I don’t know how to disconnect this... huge cord-thingy without hurting you. We’re gonna need our resident doctor for that. I can help with those, though. They don’t look too pleasant.”

Meister said, pointing to various black cables plugged in all over Prowl’s body, where there should and _shouldn’t_ be maintenance ports. “Not pleasant” didn’t even begin to describe it, each small movement would send electrical pulses directly into his central nervous system. Nothing permanently damaging, but painful enough that something as simple as sitting up took him thrice as long. 

The “die yourself” part, he dismissed as obvious. 

“If you please,” Prowl nodded, like he had any choice in this. He heard engine rumbling in the distance, that young engineer likely had managed to drive straight long enough to reach the front of the mountain and fetch their boss, this, Diarmus? Demios? His processor spat gibberish statistics after gibberish statistics at him, two parts of his mind still frantically working past each other, giving him nothing but meaningless conjectures without actual numbers to prioritize them. 

Curiously, the sound of his boss coming somehow spurred Meister into action, because he quickly set his data pad’s disengagement protocols to auto, then pinched and twisted the cable ends off one after another, all without Prowl feeling more than a twinge of pain. He’d had worse under Ratchet’s tender mercies. 

Job done, Meister immediately stood up, blaster out and aimed at Prowl’s helm. He tensed up, and not a moment too soon, because some disturbingly light pedesteps echoed to their left, accompanied by a deep, velvety voice,

“Now, what ruckus have we here?”

***


	2. Chapter 2

“Now, what ruckus have we here?”

For a tripple-changer, Deimos really knew how to disguise his presence. Meister swore the mech could hover sometimes, what with the way he just glided out from the shadows and scarred the bejeezus off of his crew. His appearances were surprising as much as his presence was imposing, that was what kept his minions on their toes. 

Clamp must have babbled his voicebox off on the drive here, because Deimos didn’t spare a glance to any of the tanks and tubes that nearly cost Meister his dinner. Probably Tuesday to him. No, he crossed the cave in three strides, blithely ignoring Meister in favor of looking their prisoner up and down, tapping a finger on his chin and said, “Hm. Surprising, but delightful.”

And— look, Meister had seen some slag. Done plenty of bad stuff, himself. He would freely admit that he was more than a little fragged up, probably would have got himself smelted had Primus not blessed him with some amazing compartmentalization skills. It just— he liked living, gotta remember that, he liked living, galaxies to go, neutral ships to board — because that survival instinct was the only thing keeping him from turning around and asking Deimos, “Pardon the Old Cybex, but are you insane?”

Because — there’s nothing “surprising” or “delightful” about this mech’s abdomen plates being replaced by a bulged-out transparent tank that housed what looked like a small mech inside! Yep tested it it had a sparkpulse and everythin’, Meister definitely wasn’t hysterical because nobody had seen a new spark in centuries let alone one that _didn’t_ come with a full-grown body, no sir. 

And like that wasn’t enough, the carrier — ha ha ha “carrier” what a strange word — had a big, red, shiny Autobot badge right there on his very sizable bumper. Plus he had the frametype and color of an Enforcer — of Petrex, ya know, that shiny newly-Autobot city three kliks away that the Decepticons were gagging to win back, the very same city Deimos was trying to smuggle shit out of, that one? 

‘Surprising, yet delightful’ his aft. Try ‘horrifying and creepy,’ for a start. 

Apparently he wasn’t the only one taken aback by Deimos’ reaction, because that— what was his name, slag why didn’t he ask oh right too distracted by that protoform floating _right friggin’ there_ — that Autobot-Enforcer-carrier-prisoner belatedly pulled his pedes up, as if trying to shield himself from Deimos’ gaze. Probably guessed that nothing good could ever come from someone like Deimos looking at you with that kind of naked interest. 

The chains connected to his pedes rattled. 

“Hmph,” Deimos smiled, bending a bit to look down at the Autobot. “Before we do anything rash, let us make something clear: you have no knowledge of Mesothulas’ involvements with me, correct?”

Lips pressed into a thin line, the prisoner met Deimos’ optics head-on,

“Whatever illegal dealings you two have, you think Mesothulas would let his kept toy in on it? I am his experiment, and nothing more.”

That was it — Meister put away his blaster. Too fragging dangerous to keep that thing out if bots kept acting up in front of him like this. May be he misread the situation — he’d be slagged in the head too if someone made him into a walking nursery — but he had looked into that Autobot’s optics and for someone who seemed like he’d been through a grinder, he actually didn’t look suicidal? 

Deimos continued to smile. The friendliness reached his optics too, that was the creepy thing. 

“You do not seem obtuse, Autobot, so what assures you I won’t simply cut this tank out and dispose of you?”

To Meister’s eternal surprise, this slagger dared to smile back,

“Because, Mesothulas has synchronized my spark signature with the protoform’s. If I die, it dies. If separated, we both perish. And I have no knowledge of illicit dealings, but Mesothulas has been working on some mysterious substance for a while — Syk Styx, he calls it, which can only be synthesized by my body’s hard-coded need to provide for this protoform.”

...Those intravenous lines, holy slag. Meister eyed the yellow-green liquid that lil’ gray thing was bobbing in, suddenly feeling very ill. 

“I see,” Deimos said, just another day on whatever dimension those two was living in. “Paean, will you please come and fetch me a sample?”

So, Deimos made the same call he made early on. Mesothulas was prepared to screw Deimos over and jump ship, everything of note had been cleaned out, yet he still put up a shield after he left. Translation: this Autobot was the most valuable thing in this Primus-forsaken madhouse. It was actually genius in a fragged up sense: the prisoner couldn’t destroy that sparkling at the cost of his own life, and if he got caught he wouldn’t immediately be killed, giving Mesothulas the chance to batter him back. 

Truly, this planet was full of crazies. Meister wanted that vacation on Hedonia real badly now. 

By Deimos’ order, the rest of the crew fanned out to search for whatever they could use and destroy what they couldn’t. Meister had the unenviable task of hacking into Mesothulas’ research notes — really, if _these_ were what he felt didn’t need hiding, Meister shuddered to imagine what was censored. By the end he just blindly copied everything, they’d have enough time in-flight to decrypt that slag. 

As he zipped back and forth between stations, making sure his data slugs worked at a reasonable pace downloading that enormous databank without frying themselves, Meister still kept an eye on what was going on in that corner. Deimos loomed behind Paean, watching with keen eyes as their doctor carefully drew some of that amniotic fluid into the syringes on his fingers and compared it to the samples they got from Mesothulas. Could be Meister imagined it, but from the way their prisoner minutely sank back, though fighting to keep his expression neutral, mech did he _not_ like needles. 

A cycle later, the lab had been completely trashed. Meister had on him twenty data slugs chokefull of body parts, mutilations and, worst of all, badly-lit homemade porn-vids. Paean had concluded that whatever that Autobot had in his tank was good stuff, goooooood stuff, they could dilute it thirty times and still sell at 1000 shannix a shot, _good stuff_. That belly might as well be made of gold. And better yet, as long as that protoform-thing was in there, they could have more of it! Potentially for metacycles! Just gotta get this outta the conflict zone, and they’d all be rich! Meister could board any ship he wanted, Pit, with his cut he could afford his own ship!

And yet—

—the way Deimos traced his claw around the Autobot brand—

—his huge digits curled easily around that tiny waist—

—his right servo gripping the black collar when he yanked the cord from under white bumper, watching his prisoner scream and scream as he choked on his own energon—

Meister’s head spun. He couldn’t help it, he knew that voice. He knew, he knew— _”That’s it, baby, open for me,” hot, wet and tight_ — where did he, how did he—

Prowl. 

His spark jumped. Prowl, _ProwlProwlProwlProwlProwlProwl_. _Not today, love_. _Forgive me, sweetspark_. Who was this mech, he didn’t know this mech, it couldn’t be—

But, Prowl. 

That was his name. 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss Jab’s Mistakes I know it will update tomorrow but I gotta do something so this happened


	3. Chapter 3

Prowl onlined in what, he presumed, was a medium-sized ship’s brig. 

No, that would be too generous, for he was the only prisoner. The other “cells” were all filled with tall boxes, old metal crates and various knick-knacks, probably dumped here to be sorted out after the current crew had dealt with this ship’s previous owners. The energon trails said it all. 

His system check came back full of errors, which was appropriate, given how he wished he could go back to unconsciousness, or better yet, just die. The area below his bumper felt like it had been scraped out by a vibro-blade, his circuits too badly burned for self-repair, but active just enough to send a continuous stream of pain signals, too numerous for him to dismiss. Prowl suspected the lack of his tactical computer had something to do with that, too. Before, he would have had enough calculations running to distract himself, or at the very least he could reason his pain away. Now his emotional cortex was running haywire, _fear_ and _betrayal_ and _loss_ disrupting his data stream, their alienness doing nothing to diminish their intensity. 

His servos were now cuffed to the front, so he could hold a cube, and the shackles on his pedes now linked to the narrow recharge slab he was lying on. From one maniac’s prison to another, same difference. Prowl had thought he hated being made to eat from Mesothulas’ palm, but in this position, he had no choice but to touch the biotank that Mesothulas had drilled onto his protoform. This painful, heavy, hideous reminder of what prize he’d had to pay for cockiness. _”You thought you could use me like that? Just destroy my works and throw me away? You have no idea what monster you have created, love. I’ll make sure you’ll never want to leave me again.”_

Love. This was what Mesothulas called ‘love’. Lust, obssession, mutual destruction. 

_”That’s Meister, love, Meis for short.”_

Casual, easy, fleeting. A different kind of love. One no less cruel, and no less painful. One he definitely should have deleted from his memory core by now, but his calculations staggered, an endless loop of confused symbols where there should be neat data points, and he was alone, and so lonely, and he missed—

Prowl tried his comm again. 

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” someone said outside his cell, same breezy voice. 

Holding one energon cube in each servo, Meister staggered a little before dropping down to sit cross-peded right in front of his cell. Prowl immediately dialed back his olfactory sensor — there were fresh energon splattered everywhere on Meister’s plating, and he was sure most of them belonged to other bots. 

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. What wouldn’t you do if you had been me?”

Meister smirked, that way he did when he thought Prowl was being precious. 

“Come now, love, your comm? Deimos has mods, he’ll pick up whatever secret channel you’re on in a sparkpulse. You’re better off tapping binary on the coolant line, this part of the ship is too thick for sound to travel updeck.”

And presumably, an audio feed wasn’t part of his surveillance. From its angle, the camera wouldn’t pick up Meister, either, just Prowl sitting down next to his cell’s energy bars. Fine then. He took his seat on the floor opposite Meister, careful so his chains would not drag on the tank, and picked up the cube. 

“So how ya feeling?” Meister asked as he took a swig. He was using his right hand, Prowl noticed, when before he had held the blaster with his left. On close inspection, his left arm was hanging limply from its socket. 

“Imprisoned,” Prowl said, taking a sip from  
his own cube. His tank immediately contested, seeing that it wasn’t the carefully blended mixture that Mesothulas had fed him, but he grimly killed the warning. “And aren’t you going to do something about that?” He gestured to the arm. 

“Oh, this bothers you? Gimme a klik,” Meister leaned forward, letting his injured arm fall on the floor, then used his bodyweight to push it back with a sickening ‘pop’. 

“There, sweetspark, all right as rain.”

Prowl narrowed his optics. 

“Stop calling me that.”

Meister opened his mouth, as if to protest, “Calling you what?”, but then he looked... chastised. He dipped his helm. 

“‘Pologies. Habits.”

That made no sense. 

“Your lover is a prisoner too?”

Meister looked like a turbodeer caught in the headlights. 

“Or you are very generous with your affections,” Prowl added. There were other possibilities, though even with his tac-net down Prowl could tell the chances were infinitesimal. 

Meister opened his mouth, then shook his helm, “Nope, I’m not having this conversation. I promise not to use terms of endearments for you anymore, can we drop this?”

“Then for what purpose have you come here?”

For a second, Meister only looked at him. _”To see you”_ , a memory surfaced in his processor. Prowl furiously scrubbed it out. 

“What else? For ya baby-bump, of course,” he drawled after a while. True, if only partially — his first instinct had merits. Prowl traced the calculation to its scrambled void, but could not see the reasoning behind his own conclusion. 

“As long as I’m adequately fueled and the drain doesn’t surpass 30% per megacycle, my body will continue production of Syk Styx until the protoform matures. What more do you want?”

Meister chugged down the rest of his cube, looking very much like he wished it had been high grade. 

“See, that’s where ya wrong. I’m sure Deimos’d _love_ to take his time with ya, but war comes for us all.”

Prowl did not like where this was going. 

“Meaning?”

Meister gestured him to finish his cube. Definitely bad news. Once he had done so, Meister ex-vented heavily, and said,

“Meaning: you’re coming with us into Decepticon territory.”

***

“Meaning: you’re coming with us into Decepticon territory.”

The words echoed in his head, getting more sour with each repetition. This really, really wasn’t part of his slagging plan. Times were hard, the move to Kaon didn’t help, he just needed some money badly. The people he hurt, none of them were worth the powdered crystals they were snorting. But Prowl was different. He was innocent, a helpless victim. An Autobot, an experiment, an Enforcer, a syk mule — any one of those charges guaranteed a death sentence in Decepticon hands. _All_ those things at once? Meister might as well wrap him up and send him with a postcard to Soundwave now. 

“But... syk use within the Decepticon army is punishable by death,” Prowl tried to reason, very Enforcer-like. A desperate market was a high-paying one, true, but who’d want the DJD on their tails for derailing The Cause? Not even Deimos’d touch that hive. 

“We’re not selling to them,” Meister waved his good arm vaguely, “we’re just not staying here as they fight the Autobots for Petrex, either. The usual route will be closed in half a deca-cycle, we can’t leave you in a lab to do regular extractions as planned. No, you’ll have to move with us to our new base.”

Prowl scooted aside to lean on the wall — that damn tank must be _hell_ on his backstruts. His servos subconsciously cupped the rounder base, likely not out of protectiveness, but fear. 

“You can’t hope to bring me across the border like this without getting detected.”

Usually, that would be true. Both armies had banned syk use, though the Decepticons were friggin’ _paranoid_ about it, probably thanks to their higher concentration of psychopaths. Even one syringe found on a person would be cause to shoot on sight. Too bad whoever this Mesothulas was, he definitely wasn’t an underachiever. 

“Wrong again,” Meister smiled bitterly. He flipped open one arm screen to show Prowl the result of his initial scan. 

“Whatever he did, the scanner sees this dense amniotic fluid as part of that thing,” he nodded towards the protoform, “and it has the same spark signature as you. Hence, on screen, the entire tank registers as your protoform. As long as we graft on some new abdomen plates, the most people can say will be that you need to lay off the energon.”

Prowl titled his helm to look at him. Then he offlined his optics, looking very tired. 

“How long?”

“Three cycles until the border, and anytime now until Paean comes with those shiny new plates for you. I suspect Deimos will want to watch. I suggest you let him do so. If you protest, he might want to do worse.”

“Everything you’ve done,” Prowl said, optics still dimmed, “ever since you met me, had been to gain my trust. Now that you’ve told me all this, what do you intend to use that trust for?”

Meister hesitated. This wasn’t the plan, was it? This wasn’t what he wanted at all. His Arghartan was stashed with his meager belongings, ready to be grabbed the moment he received his cut. There was always that small chance Deimos would shoot him out of spite or boredom, but he also had a bomb ready for that. 

Seriously, what was it about Prowl and fragging up his plans?

“Oh, ya know me,” he smiled, glad to see Prowl’s blue optics brightening up again, “can’t leave a challenge go unanswered.”

The unspoken ‘love’, they both heard loud and clear. 

***

From the beginning, Meister had been right about a lot of things. That meant he was bound to get something wrong soon, it was just statistics. Prowl should not feel sad or angry or frightened at cold, hard facts, it just—

He had hoped it wouldn’t be this particular thing. 

“No, no, I insist,” Deimos said, waving Paean off after firmly taking the new plates away from his servos. “You have seen me take mechs apart before, how hard could it be to do the reverse? I promise you can check the results later, would that be fair?”

Of course it was fair, it was Deimos’ ship. Paean scurried off, leaving Prowl alone with one clawed psycho who towered over him, in a cell where sound would not travel far. 

He really should be used to this by now. 

Out of nowhere, Deimos knelt. Prowl looked down, shocked, his memory core bringing up Mesothulas’s faceplate as he whispered through the tank to his creation. _”You will be our bond, will you not, Ostaros? You will tie your carrier to me. The three of us together, for ever and ever. Won’t you promise me that, Ostaros?”_

“You and your carrier will make me very rich, oh yes,” Deimos kissed where the tank was roundest, and the sparkling’s softly-formed faceplate most visible. Prowl felt nauseated. Clawed servos, two size classes bigger than his, wormed around his backstrut to him close to the slab’s edge. Prowl kept his cuffed servos near his bumper, wanting nothing to do with the mech touching him. _”I want you to touch me when you come, love,”_ no, no, those memories are _his_ —

“Now, I can just cover you up with these ugly things, but where would be the fun in that?” Deimos’ engine rumbled, his glossa licking a wet stripe up Prowl’s inner-thigh. If he turned away, he could see the coolant lines running up the wall, into a hole that presumably will lead to the engine room. If he could just— lean, he could—

“I want you to look at me when I take you,” Deimos said, and pushed him down. 

***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this in one night if there are errors I’ll fix them when I wake up


	4. Chapter 4

Long time ago, Meister made himself a deal. 

He would get outta Staniz, try this music thing for a while. If that didn’t work, he’d get a day job. Something respectable, where he could still make a difference. May be meet someone nice, settle down, then he could have music in his life again. Not as a career — as part of an existence. The backdrop to a colorful song, richly improvised. 

Now he was rigging a bomb attached to the engine of a ship flying right over the mountainous zone between Autobot and Decepticon territories. So much for dreams. If he was lucky though, perhaps he could save his electro-bass for some faraway organic territory. Somewhere without wars, where he’d never have to point a blaster at anyone ever again. 

His chronometer pinged twenty kliks until the ideal drop point. The border zigged-zagged according to terrain, but as long as he was close enough to Autobot flags, Deimos’ crew would choose to run _away_ , not towards them. He’d “accidentally” fought his way down the cargo deck when they first took over this ship, and that sure as slag weren’t bottles of engex littering those crates. No, this was part of an operation, smuggling Autobot weapons into merchant ships, letting them sail by the border before a crew would “conveniently” take charge to deliver them to Decepticon hands. Judging by the ease with which Deimos’ mechs had taken on disguises to join the merchant crew, this could have gone on for stellar cycles. The Autobots were hemorrhaging weapons, deep from within Petrex’s walls. 

His chronometer ticked on. Any time now, they’d cross paths with a small team of Autobot infantry. Deimos picked up their comm five cycles ago, which was why he insisted on this ship taking off two cycles early. Autobot incursion could only mean one thing: tightening borders. They’d had a good run, but this would be their last shipment outta Petrex. 

Just then, Meister heard it. 

The tapping. 

It could only be binary, he didn’t need to wait two nanoseconds to know what that meant. His topo pinged this area as dangerously wooded, a bit too deep on the Decepticon side for his liking. Whatever, Prowl needed him now, they’d just have to make a run for it. 

“Meis? Whatcha doin’ down here?”

Of course, just his luck. Meister half turned around, using own body to hide the charge, his servo in the shadow slowly pulling out his blaster. 

“Checking the engine like the boss asked me to, kid. And how many times have I told you not to get high somewhere flammable? You’d get us all killed.”

Clamp sheepishly held the bag of crystal leaves close to his chest. As if on cue, echoing all around them, the tapping had turned into wild ruckus. 

“Meis, what’s that saaaarrhhghhh!!”

He shot Clamp in the t-cog, sending his body into convulsion and activating his blackout pulse. As the entire ship shut down mid-flight, he clicked the bomb’s timer, sprinting over Clamp’s shaking alt-mode to the outside just as the emergency door slammed shut behind him. Pity, he had wanted that kid to live. They were in free fall now, alarms blaring, red lights throwing everything into chaos. He had two kliks before systems rebooted and the cell bars came back online, he needed to get Prowl outta there fast. 

— Or Prowl could get out himself. The ship turned 60 degrees, Meister activated his magnets just in time to pull himself up the ceiling and let Deimos’s screaming figure slide by right under him. Deimos was flailing, one tiny vibroblade stabbed into his right optic. Only weapon he could slip through the cell bars by hiding it under the lid of an energon cube, and Prowl had to keep it in his mouth through their conversation. Smiling, he thrusted one hand down to break Prowl’s slide, letting him hang around his waist like a kilokoala before he began to climb towards one of the emergency exits. 

Shaking, Prowl clung close to him, “Don’t _ever_ leave me alone with a maniac like that ever again!”

He laughed, shooting the door hinges off and pulling them both to freedom, “Of course, love, as you wish!”

***

Remember his topo said, “Dangerously wooded area, deep-fried on Decepticon side, 3/10 would not recommend?”

Yeah, put that on his gravestone. 

Once his parachute tore to shreds he tried to cover for Prowl the rest of the way, depending on branches to break their fall. Not his first rodeo, not even his first emergency jump with a civilian, still Meister knew he’d get a deca-cycle on some hospital berth for this. He didn’t care. Rolling across sheets of metal foliage, he inflated his small shockmesh around Prowl’s belly, covering Prowl’s body with his own, letting his reinforced plating take the brunt of impact. 

It still wasn’t enough. 

One tiny crack, that was all it took. Greenish fluid seeped onto the forest floor, and Prowl convulsed, servos clutching the tank, faceplate twisted and mouth hanging in silent agony. Meister unsubspaced every medical tool he had, somehow detached from it all, his servos moving to check Prowl’s vitals while his processor replayed Clamp’s alt-mode he left behind, writhing in pain just like this. Point-blank blast of his engine bomb, that kid died, he left him there to die. And what did he do wrong, tried to score some shannix like Meister did? Smoked some leaves? Was this his plans catching up with him? Was Prowl the price he had to pay?

From a distance, he watched himself talk, hand covered in Prowl’s energon, “The emergence protocol had engaged, its spark would not be synced to yours anymore. I have to cut it out now, I won’t let you d—“

“No! You can’t—“ Prowl clutched his arm like a mech possessed. Then he yanked the collar, “Take it off! Take— take this thing off me, now!!” Meister didn’t understand, but his body obeyed, and the moment it came off Prowl screamed into his comm,

“Code 63-A1! Code 63-A1! Alpha team immediately report to my location! Medical emergency, I repeat, medical emergency!”

Meister compared his current topo with their last location, “No, they’re too far away! I have training, I can perform field operations! Your spark is fading, don’t do this to me, I can’t lose you too—“

Prowl gripped his shoulder, pulling him down, desperately pushing his servo onto the tank, “But you— your frametype, your face— I know you now, I know you! He’s ours— he’s _yours_! Please, Jazz, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I ran, please don’t leave me, please don’t make me—“

A howl cut through the forest, scorching the air all around them. From the burning wreckage of the _Crossed Signals_ a chopper emerged, black spikes and claws wreathed in fury. On that forest floor death came to him, love broke in him, the pieces of who he was, who he had _always been_ came way too late. Jazz sat in a pool of drug, of his and his lover and _son_ ’s energon, and the only thing his goddamn brain module could come up with was,

“Right. Triple-changer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frag me Im so sleepy


	5. Epilogue

The Autobots came through for them in the end. 

Sideswipes and Sunstreaker crashed through every single tree in their way to meet Deimos before he could blast Jazz away. Ironhide scooped Prowl onto Ratchet’s alt for transport, then coaxed Jazz into driving behind him back to their base on the other side of the mountain. Jazz wasn’t sure he heard a word anyone said those first three cycles. He only knew that by the time the twins got back, nobody ever mentioned Deimos again. 

He was Jazz. His name was Jazz. 

In his now unlocked files, he found debriefing protocols for each time he went into deep cover. The shells he created for each persona, carefully crafted to satisfy mission parameters. The unlock phrases, contact details, web of influence. Sexual proclivities, frametype preferences. Each files read like someone he could have met before, and that was their point. Any mech could always recall a Meister, a Ricochet, a Jazz, someone they weren’t close to but vaguely could confirm were there. He could slip in anywhere, be everywhere. He didn’t exist. 

He had a son. 

He thought of Clamp. So many Clamps. So many files he filled with red flags, then buried away. He liked most of them, some even genuinely. He caused their deaths, one way or another. He never was all himself, but those choices were always deliberate. 

He killed them all. Whether they deserved it never really mattered. He had his missions. 

***

Prowl never liked hospitals. 

Onlining on some strange medical berth. Lines pumping things in and out of him. All his maintenance ports overridden, bared and sore. The white lights, the beeping, the machines humming. He hated how empty it made him feel. He hated feeling powerless. 

Beside him, Jazz leaned back on a chair, listless. Didn’t even play with a stylus, like he’d usually do. They both looked outside the windows. Somewhere behind that beautiful mountain, the war still raged. 

“We got what we wanted, didn’t we,” Jazz said, one servo twitching on his thigh. 

He brought back info on Deimos’ operation, Mirage and Bee tracked down his contact in Petrex and busted the smuggling ring in three mega-cycles flat. Twenty data slugs of Mesothulas’s experiments plus the Styx sample Prowl brought back, were enough for Perceptor to reverse-engineer a type of synthetic energon twenty-times more condensed, lasted in the system longer and was safer for transport. 

Brilliant, really. Victory for all. 

Prowl stared at the ceiling, unseeing. His abdomen felt empty. He could churn out statistics now, each number touting Autobot advancement for centuries to come. 

Somehow, everything seemed gray. 

“I un—underestimated—“ he started, trying to clear static from his voicebox. “I only had seconds— I only knew you were undercover in Petrex. I was confident I could still ID you without my databank, but I didn’t— I never dreamed he would—“

“He played you,” Jazz said, gently, one servo closing around Prowl’s. Around what should be theirs, but wasn’t, not anymore. Wetness ran down the corner of Prowl’s optics, still unseeing. 

“You sabotaged his dealings with Deimos to get my attention, but he figured it out. He used my spark imprint on yours to make that protoform. He wanted to hurt you, to get back at me for stealing you. He’s still out there. An we’ll make him pay.”

That was the last thing they could agree on — revenge. A motion more than a promise, hopeless before it even started. 

Coming back to his suit, Jazz pulled out the Ahghartan electro-bass from his belongings. 

Someone he loved. A colorful life. A job where he could make a difference. It all worked out. 

Except for the killings. For wars. 

He smashed it into pieces. 

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s it imma pass out now. Go read Mistakes it is awesome <3

**Author's Note:**

> Would you believe this entire thing came from discussions of Prowl’s fanon home culture and crystal meth jokes


End file.
